On a hill behind the battlefield, Zhao Bing was also paying attention to the battle. The Song army almost crushed the enemy with one-sided advantage and fought happily. But he also knew that victory was based on strong firepower. The artillery battle between the two sides seemed more like a preview of a siege battle in his opinion. Although the Song army quickly withdrew from the battle after capturing the Xiying camp and did not cross the moat.

This battle was not big in Zhao Bing's experience, far less than the ups and downs of the attack on Yangzhou, and there was no difficulty in fighting bravely and wits with the Mongol Yuan; nor did there be the thrillingness of putting the enemy into Jiangdong; nor did there be no tragic moments when he personally led his troops to charge in the battle at the most cruel time. However, the Xiangyang city was the most solid of the cities he attacked.

Zhao Bing listed the cities he attacked. The first city was Guangzhou. At that time, he fought with the mentality of "it would rather die in battle than starve to death". The problem in front of the winner was solved, and if he lost, he would lose all his family's fortune. Therefore, in addition to being brave enough to defeat Guangzhou, it was also because Guangzhou City was demolished by the Mongol Yuan, and the cowardly generals, he led a group of mobs to seize the city. Now he wanted to win.

The second city was Quanzhou. At that time, Zhao Bing had just ascended the throne. In order to support a large group of people in the court, he had to fight a "robbery" battle for money. Although the banner was to avenge the bloody night in Quanzhou that year, the Pu family slaughtered the sons of the city, but in essence it was for money. However, this battle was the first time he really organized a siege and learned some principles and skills.

In the subsequent battle to recover Jiangnan, Zhao Bing was able to be said to have led dozens of troops to break through the city, and only Lin'an and Ezhou were considered strong cities. The Northern Expedition that began last year also captured famous strong cities in history such as Yangzhou, Shouzhou, Xuzhou and Yingtianfu, but compared with Xiangyang in front of him, it was still much inferior, which made him pay attention to it.

First of all, the moat in Xiangyang is 100 meters wide, which is unparalleled in the world. Although it is nothing to Zhao Bing, who is used to seeing the big rivers and seas, the one that is blocking the front is a magnificent city with heavy troops. They will use all means to stop crossing the river. What is even more troublesome is that it is difficult to send large siege equipment to the city. It cannot really fill the moat. Not to mention the time and manpower consumed, this moat is connected to the Han River. The water flow will not only take away the soil, but also try to empty the continuous influx of river water. How do you fill it with the current technical means?

Secondly, it is precisely because it is impossible to fill the moat that the options for large-scale siege equipment are discharged, which restricts the means of siege. One is to attack from the city gate, the other is to destroy the city wall, and the other is to use ladders to climb over the wall. These three siege methods are also commonly used by the Song army and are widely used in actual combat. However, Zhao Bing thought that it was not easy to deal with Xiangyang City.

Because the wall of a big city is not just a wall that isolates the inside and outside, but a complete set of strategic systems that completely revolve around the "defense" system. The thickness of the Xiangyang city wall is almost as high as a mountain, and the top of the wall can be used to run cars, horses and exercise. Each city tower has three levels: gate tower, arrow tower, and main tower. With such a large city wall, the cannon is probably powerless to bombard it.

In addition to the tight defense of the city gates, corner towers are also built on the corner platforms of the four corners of the city wall, which serves to assist the city gates to observe and defend against invading enemies on all sides. On the outside of the entire city wall, there is a horse face every thirty feet, each horse face is eight feet wide, extending outward from the city wall, with a structure of more than three feet high and low, making the outside of the city wall a zigzag shape. Each horse face is built on the face of the city wall, and there are enemies for garrisons for garrisons. There are daughter walls on the city wall and horse face, and there are notches and square holes that can hide and look out, shoot, so as to facilitate the defenders to attack the enemy from the side and make the siege attackers be attacked on three sides.

The city gate is a weakness of defense, and you can drive in after breaking through. However, this method is only applicable to small cities, not large cities with tight defenses. In the city gate, the city gate is composed of outer cities, moon cities, and urns, and is linked together. Therefore, if you wanted to attack the city gate in ancient times, even if you broke through the blockade line of the arrow tower, you finally hit the urns, and it is still difficult to enter the city.

The role of the urncheng is equivalent to a small city, which is placed outside the main city gate to protect the main city gate. If the main city gate is opened on the front, the urncheng gate will be opened on both sides, and there are no doors on the front and cannot be attacked. In addition, there are defensive fortifications such as sheep and horse walls in front of the urncheng gate, which play a role in covering up. Therefore, whether it is a cannon with gunpowder or a counterweight casting cart that fires stone bullets, it is almost impossible to hit the city gate directly.

It is not easy to break the door by blasting, because the city gate and the corner of the city are the most easily attacked positions. Generally, various weapons will be concentrated on the guards on the city gate and on both sides to protect the city gate. In addition to a thick wooden door with large copper nails, there are also Xuanmen, Qianjin Gate, etc. Even if the city gate is broken, the Xuanmen will be immediately down or the gate will fall.

What makes the attacking side even more crazy is that the city gate is generally not one, most of which have two front and back gates, plus there are four gates in the city gate alone. When you enter the city gate, you will be attacked by the defenders above the city without dead corners. The so-called "catching turtles in the jar" comes from this. Even if the city gates can be smashed, the city towers can even be collapsed, and the city walls are blasted, there are still many ways to be stationed as temporary fortifications, which can still serve as a barrier. Therefore, even if a cannon destroys the city gate, the gate more than ten meters long is enough to set up obstacles, and even the city gate can be simply sealed, so that you cannot pass.

There are not many options left. If you climb over the wall and enter the city, you will finally arrive under the city through endless hardships, brave the rain of arrows and flying stones, and erect a ladder. There are still the city-guarding equipment that thousands of years of working people have created to create wisdom and skills waiting for you.

Crash: A tool specially used to hit a ladder, tie a collision rod on the frame, and an iron fixture is fixed at the front end of the rod. When the enemy's ladder approaches the city wall, push the impact rod to crash or hit it.

Fork rod: It is a tool that can not only resist the enemy from climbing the city with a flying ladder, but also be used to kill enemies who climb the city. When the enemy's flight ladder approaches the city wall, use the horizontal blade at the front of the fork rod to press the ladder and push it down. Or when the enemy climbs to half the waist of the wall, use the fork rod to push and chop down the ladder. The horizontal blade in front of the rod can also kill many enemies.

Flying hook: There are four sharp claw hooks, tied with iron chains, and then connect the rope. When the enemy rushed to the city wall and was about to climb the ladder and climb the city, he would accidentally surrender to the enemy group, and he could kill and injure several people at a time.

Yasha Ring: also known as "retaining guests". This weapon uses wood with a diameter of one foot and a length of more than one foot as rollers. The surrounding area is covered with "reverse whisker nails". The nail head is exposed with 5 inches of wooden surface. Two-foot wheels are installed at both ends of the roller wood, and then wired with iron cables to connect to the winch. When the enemy gathers under the city, it is thrown into the enemy group and then twists the winch, which can continuously crush the enemy.

Stones and rolling wood: Both stones and logs used to defend the city, and are also the simplest city defense tools prepared by ancient city guards. We can often see on TV that the defenders on the city wall often use some ordinary large stones and logs to throw them down when the enemy climbs the city wall, in order to hit the enemy and reduce the intensity of the siege.

Are you already overwhelmed by seeing these various things? Moreover, the defenders can gather troops hiddenly and safely in it, and choose the right time to launch a short counterattack. This counterattack is very close to the city and can get strong support from projected weapons on the top of the city, which will often put the attacking side in a dilemma, so the wall is not so easy to turn over.

As for the method of using artillery to bombard the city wall, Zhao Bing once imagined that as the "inventor", he knew too much about the performance of current artillery. The cannon, known as the "heavy artillery", is still possible to deal with the city walls of small county towns, but it is too difficult to bombard a strong city like Xiangyang. The cannon he made himself still has a long way to go as the terminator of the city wall.

First of all, the current artillery uses black gunpowder, and its implementation power and power are far from the yellow gunpowder of later generations. In addition, the city walls are mostly rammed with earth, which has good energy absorption, which further weakens the power of the shells. Secondly, the accuracy of the artillery is not high, making it difficult to hit wherever it points, and it is difficult to ensure multiple hits to the same point.

In addition, use cannons from a distance and slowly bombard the city wall until they obtain a large enough gap and have enough gaps. The defender is in a hurry and has no time to repair it, so that the main force will be put into the attack. Even so, if the defender has sufficient manpower, he can build a simple village wall inside and outside the gap, which plays a similar role as the urn. Under such conditions, if the defender has strong strength, sufficient manpower and material resources, and strong will, it will be difficult to be captured.

There are profound lessons in history. Zhao Bing should have recorded two hundred years later. The artillery technical level at that time should be similar to what he has made today. At that time, the Battle of Constantinople broke out in West Asia. In order to break through the city, Turkey cast the largest artillery in the world at that time. These cannons were so large that just transporting the cannons to Constantinople was a matter of exhausting national strength. Each cannon was taken care of by hundreds of bulls, hundreds of craftsmen, and thousands of laborers, and there were also troops escorting along the way.

Mohammed attacked the city wall with giant cannons. Each shell of the giant cannon was enough to destroy part of the city wall, but it still failed to break out the gap. Because giant cannons needed to load ammunition, Byzantine defenders were able to repair most of the damage after each bombardment, and the defenders had only eight thousand troops. In the end, the Turks still needed to invest huge forces to attack the city, and later they attacked the city with a small gate that was forgotten by the Byzantines.
Chapter completed!